2022, installation
in cooperation with the international artist residence Villa Waldberta
Construction support: Boris Maximowitz (Treibgut), Hiroyuki Abe
Greenhouse Marathon was created for the 50th anniversary festival of the Munich Olympics. In the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021, some of the games, such as the marathon, were held in Sapporo, following concerns that Tokyo would be too hot. Sapporo is a northern city which hosted the Winter Olympics in the same year as the Munich Olympics in 1972. However, Sapporo was also hotter than usual that year, with the marathon starting early in the morning and about 30% of the runners abandoning the race.
It is expected that more regions will become unsuitable to host the Olympic Games in the future due to climate change (Oyama et al., 2022). Sports such as marathon, where climate has a significant impact on performance, may act as a sensor, making one aware of long-term environmental changes from a physical experience.
In the project, a treadmill was placed in a greenhouse built along paths for runners and cyclists in the Olympiapark. A sensor in the greenhouse obtained the air temperature there, and continuously displayed the year/date/time of the same temperature in the records of the Olympic marathons of the last 120 years, the Sapporo marathon on 8 and 9 August 2021, and the predicted average maximum temperature in Munich for the next 50 years.
